Snapchat's 'Snapcash' Lets You Send Money To Friends

Snapchat isn't just for sending your everyday pictures and video overlaid with tongue-in-cheek text anymore. Monday the company announced Snapcash, a new feature that allows users to send money to friends using the app. So how does this work?

According to the showtune-style song in the ad below, it only requires linking your debit card, swiping in to chat and typing a dollar sign followed by the amount and pressing send. Snapchat has partnered with Square, who will securely store all the debit card information.

As the app has developed and added new features, it's become a way to quickly communicate with friends and family in a touch-and-go kind of way. Snapchat says this feature is also "fast, fun, and incredibly simple." The way it's presented definitely aligns with the brand they've established, and it'll be interesting to see how users take to this new option for interaction.

Snapchat For Business?

With the advent of Snapchat advertising, the social platform has increasingly made itself more valuable to businesses. And with the new Snapcash feature, could Snapchat be a new sales platform for businesses? We've seen it with Soldsie, which allows Facebook, Instagram, and other social media accounts to sell products directly to users without even interacting with a company website. Only time will tell if this payment tool will allow businesses to go directly to consumers, without them ever having to leave their favorite social media platform.

So happy Snapcashing! And if you haven't seen their ad announcing the release yet...well, let's just say it's snappy.

Update 11/21/14

Of course we had to experiment with Snapcash ourselves as soon as it went live, and report back with what we found out!

The Snapchat team sent out a message to their users announcing that Snapcash is now up and running. I received this message yesterday.

So, of course I had to test it out on another user and see how it worked. I typed in the dollar sign, followed by an amount and this is what displayed:

When I tapped the green button that appeared, I was prompted with the following screen to input my card information.